Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Good bye, 2007!

Last night our friends Liina, Hille, Anu, Margit, Liis & Kristjan & Matilda, Erika & Mait & Siim Oskar came over to send off 2007 in style, with Peter & Kristel joining us after midnight. We watched some must-see programmes on the TV (Kreisiraadio and the President's New Year's Eve Speech), played Scrabble and the Estonian equivalent of Trivial Pursuit, competed against each other in a quiz (consisting of a literary round, a culinary round and a general knowledge round), watched the fireworks (twice, actually, as about half of Tallinn's population seems to live in a different time zone:), chatted and enjoyed ourselves. And of course, we ate lots of good food.

Here's a list of dishes and drinks we enjoyed last night with appropriate English and Estonian language links (so I'd remember next year what to serve and what not to serve:)

Happy New Year, everyone!!! Head uut aastat!!!

Some eye-catching salmon roe and onion mouthfuls (sibulapaadid kalamarjaga; red onion, full-fat sour cream or creme fraiche, chopped red onion, salmon roe, dill, black pepper). One of the most popular nibbles on the table last night (and yes, although onion is strong-tasting, the creamy sour cream and salty salmon roe stole the show):

Kiluvõilevad aka rye bread toasts with butter, pickled Baltic herring, chopped green onions and grated boiled egg (my friend Erika and her family are currently living & working in Brussels, Belgium, so these über-Estonian nibbles were especially for them):

Just before midnight we enjoyed K's modern take on the traditional Estonian Christmas meal - a canapé of black pudding, lingonberry jelly and roast potato:

And we had cheese, of course. There's an excellent local blue cheese now, Breti Blue (far back), and they also do a Brie-type cheese with caraway seeds (oozing on the front). We also had some lovely Mimolette (you can see a tiny glimpse of it down on the left) and Cathedral City Extra Mature Cheddar (front):

There were two main desserts - a gingerbread tiramisu, garnished with my current favourite berry, sea-buckthorn:

Both desserts were inspired by my recent internship at the top gourmet restaurant in Tallinn (story to follow). As making tiramisu for dessert left us with 8 egg whites, I made two types of meringues - coconut ones (kookosbeseed) and plain ones (beseeküpsised):

OMG!We made Colombian style "bunuelos" and to reduce the residual guilt of our excesses from one week ago, not much more, but very good: snacks based on cured cheeses from different regions of Spain, Cured Ham top quality of course, pineapples, mangoes, and mandarines in orange juice with vanilla ice cream. That was all!You might want to try bunuelos; in Colombia we cant live without them, they are sold in every corner, there are cafeterias that serve only them, and drinks and I am sure that anybody would love them as much. They are doughy balls made with corn flour and salty curd cheese. They are served with dulce de leche, another typical thing you may want to try! The recipe (unfortunately the only one in English that I could find in the 5 minutes I could use for the search) is not very precise but you are very creative, and bunuelos are simple cheese puffs. They are the last of the very short list!: http://www.colombianembassy.co.uk/culture_recipes.htmNext time, I will send you a better link, in the meantime ALL THE BEST! My wish is to continue counting with your very kind, entertaining and inspiring blog. We all love it in this household! MariaC.

What a feast Pille, it looks lovely, and very different from what we use to have here. Thanks for your greetings in Estonian the other day, I really enjoyed that, Although I have no idea how to pronounce that.Bonne annee 2008 a toi et a ton ami.